Life and politics from the Sunshine State's best city

Jacksonville - page 6

Animal rights groups have scored a major victory against the Greatest Show On Earth, but that isn’t stopping the protests. The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, America’s best-known circus, announced Monday it will relocate all its elephants to a conservation center here in Florida by the end of May. That pushes up the retirement date for circus pachyderms by more than a year. The Ringling announcement comes after years of protests from animal rights organizations who’ve long accused…

Whether it’s the construction of green buildings, pushing more public transit, or investing in sustainable infrastructure, the Sunshine State is practically flunking when it comes to energy efficiency. That’s according to a new scorecard by a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has issued grades to Florida’s four largest cities. Jacksonville got a 26 out of 100 for efficiency. That puts it 40th out of the 51 cities surveyed. Tampa’s at 42, with an even lower score of 25,…

Conversations about Atlanta’s Dan Quinn and Jacksonville’s Gus Bradley were a lot different a couple of months ago. The Falcons started the season 5-0, and the first-year coach looked like he would get the team back to the playoffs after a two-year absence. The Jaguars lost five of their first six games, couldn’t get out of their own way and were surrounded by speculation about Bradley’s future. The talk has changed dramatically since. Now, the good friends and former Seattle…

The USF Bulls, off to a bad start to their basketball season, finally discovered their shooting touch Wednesday night. The Bulls had the fourth-best shooting night in school history, and its highest in 11 seasons, on its way to an 88-75 victory over Jacksonville. USF, ranked as the third-worst three-point team in America coming into the game was 22.7 percent, more than doubled its usual average. USF hit 63.3 percent of its field goals and 56.2 percent of its three…

The HBO documentary film shot in Jacksonville that tells the story of the Jordan Davis shooting and the trial of Michael Dunn will screen on the Florida State University campus this weekend before it premieres on national television next week. In an e-blast, the group Generation Progress has announced the screening in cooperation with HBO, the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus, the Florida State University chapter of the NAACP, along with the League of Women Voters of Florida State…

An analysis by The Tampa Bay Times showed that Tampa police wrote more tickets last year than sheriff’s offices in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties combined and more per capita than cops in Jacksonville, Miami, St. Petersburg and Orlando, the state’s four other largest cities. And no other law enforcement agency in the state arrests more people than the Tampa Police Department. The paper reported that each arrest, each ticket, feeds into a formula that calculates an officer’s “productivity ratio”…

Political pundits from coast to coast declared Jeb Bush‘s presidential campaign all but dead Wednesday night after his desultory performance in the third GOP debate, from Boulder, Colorado. The Economist wrote that,”(I)t is hard to see him coming back into contention now.” “It was do or die. And Bush died,” wrote Slate’s Jamelle Boulle. Bush obviously believes reports of his demise are greatly exaggerated, but it’s not one to say his campaign is struggling. Although they may have already been scheduled, having three events…